Do you feel free to ask questions of God in response to the various things that are entering your life?
Whatever answer you have given to this question, think again, and ask yourself… assuming that you do… Why do you ask God the often loaded question, from our perspective… WHY?
After all, it seems both reasonable and reconcilable, in the same circumstance, given that God is our Father, Friend, Guide, and also the all-Perfect, all-Wise, all-Holy God, who never gets it wrong, that such a reality can seem both right and wrong, at the same moment, at the same time!
As one further reflects on this, how one reconciles and integrates trajectories of biblical truth, such as the Wisdom, Sovereignty, and Providence of God, with other truths related to the Fatherhood, the Mercy, and the Love of God, which can impact on such a person’s readiness to offer up such refrains, and when the frequent fallenness of humanity is taken into account, there is the possibility of any number of reasons why we are prepared to ask God… WHY? This is not even mentioning a number of other theological concepts such as the Transcendence and Immanence of God, the Humanity and Divinity of Christ, and the impact of the theological trajectories of different denominations, to name a number, and not a few.
All this is beginning to sound rather convoluted, and even abstract for those who are going through a world of hurt, where the self-awareness of such perspectives is a cosmos away from a breaking heart. This does not mean that such affirmations are unimportant, but it does mean that the context for such times is often very personal and painful, and what triggers one’s response can relate mostly to the matters of the heart. This is important to grasp!!!
Therefore, let me get a little personal, which affirms the motivation for this reflection…
As I was reflecting on my illness, with the impact that it has in limiting our familial context, and the possible way ahead, which is unknown, as I initially began to think to myself, “Who was I, thinking I could ask God what was going on“… I thought about this some more and reflected more on what was actually taking place.
The result was that I came to conclusion that how asking God “Why” or “What are you doing, What is going” can be both a righteous act and wrong-headed reaction, dependent on a number of factors at work within the humanity of our reality, and that knowing to discern what is going on when such motivations arise, is vitally important in the living of our lives for the glory of God… and not only negatively, so that we don’t do it in light of the wrong reasons, but just as significantly and more positively, because one should know how to freely talk with one’s Father!
Whenever we are going through tough times, call it the tendency or outworking of the reality of relationships, at such moments and at such times, our humanity seeks to know why things are happening, what is the purpose of God at such times, and where could this be heading?
It can be made even tougher when in the back of our minds, questioning God can seem like the most irrational thing to do!
It seems to me, as I have recently reflected on my own situation, in light of my desire to see God move in my circumstances, that in coming to God and asking the above questions, in seeking Him for answers to what can seem like the unanswerable, based on our own wisdom anyway, there are two possible contexts that can encourage this activity of the soul, one not-so-good, and a second that honours God!
The… “God How Could You” Posture
We can all be prone to this perspective, the situation we are going through is not what we want, desire, or even what we perceive brings the most glory to God, and so we unload… God, What is going on? Why? To be sure, such can be a reflection of the multitude of biblical saints that are recorded for our benefit who have asked God Why?… Why do the heathen rage?… Why do they prosper? I am very thankful for the Scriptures that record the factual words of people in a variety of realities, which provides a real-life snap-shot of the multi-layered terrain of living this life. One of the best examples is the Old testament saint, Job, the man who was put through the mill, ground down into ground, but who came through it in the end, by the grace of God. God does commend the man in the end, in front of his “friends”, but this was not without a few scraps and bruises along the way, as God asks why Job is opening his mouth about things he has no real idea about, in response to Job’s more self-indignant pleadings that God owes him an explanation!
We would do well to read and reflect on the themes in the Book of Job, as it relates to this question, which, God willing, the following points may help to further uncover, as we digress on what is going on in our hearts when we ask God… WHY?
>What this says about our understanding of our self
The problems in our lives could very easily be brought down to two foundational issues, we too very easily both wrong-size ourselves and wrong-size our God, making the first too big, and the second too small. We need to remember that we are prone to not only miss the mark, but misunderstand where there should even be a mark. Who are we, after all? Yes, we are children of the Most High, but this does not reflect on the attractiveness of self, which has lured God in! How foolish we are, that we too often practically act like this is true! We are being made into the image of Who He Is, because of the mercy and grace of God… period! Therefore, when all is said and done, in and of ourselves, we are all the worst sinner we will ever know (Thanks C. J. Mahaney)!
The reason that such a perspective is important is that when we come before the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, such should impact in our practice! Integrating the reality of our falleness into our worldview will encourage a biblically-based humility that recognises that when we desire to come before God to give Him a piece of our mind, as to how we think things should be taking place, that we really are too broken down to be confident that we have the correct perspective, in contradistinction to the Creator’s all-perfect understanding of reality, past, present, and future!
I mean, can we really comprehend God’s reality?
>What this says about our understanding of God
Just as we tend to super-size ourselves, simultaneously of this reality, we under-size our God, with the result being that we make Him, the Lord of All, more into image of our humanity, than the Creator-God that He is! God is not incapacitated by our circumstances, domesticated by our disasters, confused by our contexts, or befuddled by our bellowing. God is in control of our lives, and where Chaos ensues on our part, God is free from all such limitations, other than the limitation to do anything that is contrary to Who He Is!
The solution to right sizing ourselves can very well be resolved by first replacing this vision of ourselves with a true vision and reality of God! When we try and merely lambaste ourselves into correct praxis, we very often fail. For example, the solution to the fear of Man is to not simply focus on dealing with this in our self, per see, as the need is to focus on something greater! This greater vision is the fear of the Lord, and by inculcating this reality, one is given both a new reigning paradigm that will both, help to right size our self, as we right size God into our existence!
Therefore, the question when we are approaching God, at these times of asking… WHY?… is functionally… How Great is your God? If our thoughts of God are in correspondence to the reality as presented in the Word of God, we will be mindful of how awesome our God is, how matchless are His ways, and how insurmountable is His wisdom in this world, which courses through the living of our lives! It is this God who has made the promises contained in Scripture, such as in the well known refrains in Rom. 8:28 and Phil. 1:6, which are as inviolable as the God who makes these promises!
It is this God who is in control of our… WHY?
>What this says about our understanding of the Gospel
As I have affirmed in other places, in light of the words of the Reformers, our hearts are indeed “Idol Factories” that are more than prone to this default mode. No place in our lives may illumine this more than in our understanding of the Gospel as it relates to suffering. Spending time with Tim Keller, vicariously, has helped expose this in my own heart. Keller has made comments about a lady who had attended Redeemer for some time, who had been in another “church” for a long period of time, and who confessed that she had only heard the Gospel for really the first time at Redeemer. This lady made the following comments. Note that this is my summation, but she went to affirm that if… God saves us by His grace, He can really ask anything of us. Do you get that? If salvation is free, than God owes us… NOTHING! Religion says to God, I have done this and that, I have paid my spiritual taxes, and my spiritual dues… YOU OWE ME!!! Probably no other context in life encourages this more than when we suffer, as at such times, what we really believe about the Gospel, is put up in lights!
This also underscores the connection with the previous affirmation about the character and reality of the God of the Bible. Imagine what an unreliable Despot, with such a free reign in our lives, to do whatever his whims and fancies, would be like? Such further underscores why we need to KNOW God!
However, how does your reaction in the heat of battle reconcile with the reality of the Gospel message?
I have just spoken about how God does not owe us anything, which is true, but such a way of framing things may also miss the glorious part, which is EVERYTHING that God has given to us in Jesus Christ! Not wanting to downplay anything that you have and will go through, as I know, Life can be brutal, but in light of what we have been given, are presently getting, and will receive in the future, these really are light and momentary afflictions! Remember the Gospel is more than merely justification, keep turning the pages, your story has just begun!
People, Gospel-size your life… and ask God, WHY… NOT?!
>What this says about our understanding of the future
Being the motor-mouth that I am, I may have already alluded to this… but not so fast!
You see, while our eternity in Christ is definitely in view, I am wanting to focus more about how this highlights our view of this portion of our living, under this Sun! If God is the controlling reality in human history, and He is, than, given His purposes in and through the life of the believer, the times when we think life is falling apart, are part of “the Good” of Rom. 8:28, and have a redemptive God-glorifying reality, even as we can not see past the next moment, or the pain within.
Now, this is not to say that this is not a battle to maintain the faith and such a perspective, particularly as the walls cave in. But it is to say that when such times arise, as we fall apart emotionally, we must lay hold of these promises of God by faith, not letting go, knowing that while our hearts may periodically fail us, our God never does!
Therefore, when asking God Why?… Remember, not only his faithfulness in His Word, but His faithfulness in your life to the present, with an eye to his assurances for your future. What this means is that the wall that is before you that you can not possibly see how any good can come about, is merely a door that He will move you through at His time, where you will affirm that such was true!
Right sizing God’s good control over the future helps us to right size the painful times of the present!
Conclusion
In our next post, we will look at the positive posture in asking God… WHY?
Stay Tuned, it is just around the blog-corner
Until Next Time
I am Jonny King
January 14th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
[...] post in this two-post series, you really need to have a read of the first post in this series, HERE, which deals with the not-so-God-good posture of those who come to the Creator and ask the [...]